


The Institution (or: Sparkles and the Great Escape)

by pollyrepeat



Category: Die Anstalt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollyrepeat/pseuds/pollyrepeat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's like the worst game of CLUE in existence," he mutters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Institution (or: Sparkles and the Great Escape)

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal thanks to my beta reader, jonesandashes.
> 
> Written for Alexanda

 

 

_"In a soulless world, its inhabitants are spineless, spoilt by consumerist culture and yet, lonely. Now this gives birth to frustration and makes one even lonelier. The last friend remaining is the cuddly toy. These creatures can't defend themselves. They cannot run away._

Insanity is their only means of escape." -- Die Anstalt

* * *

When he enters die Anstalt, the contents of his stomach are: one tiny recorder, three cigarettes, and a folded sheet of paper that says, "I AM NOT CRAZY. REALLY. CALL THIS NUMBER FOR PROOF," followed by Ange's cell number. The microphone is there to gather hard evidence, the cigarettes for comfort, and the paper - well, it's a contingency plan. 

During his admittance interview, Dr Burgess steeples her fingers and leans her elbows on the desk, watching him do his best to act like he's completely off his rocker. He's practiced this in front of the mirror and in front of Ange, and he's fairly confident in his abilities to pull this one off. 

"How did you come by your name, Sparkles?" Dr Burgess asks at the end of a barrage of questions. 

Angela named him Sparkles when she was five. They've been together ever since. Through thick and thin! Through tears and laughter! Through rain and snow, through drooling, biting neighbourhood dogs and a failed marriage that saw him lost in a closet for three years. They're kind of like the postal service, but more awesome. Ange and Sparkles, dynamic investigative duo!

"SHINY," he exclaims, very calmly, and then pretends to burst into hiccupping sobs. When he finally tapers off, Dr Burgess is simply gazing at him from the other side of the desk.

"I will admit you to this institution on a trial basis," she tells him, after a pause. "Unfortunately Dr Kindermann, who oversees most of the institution's day-to-day aspects, has left us for a last-minute research opportunity in Japan; however, once he returns I'm certain -"

"He _what_?" Sparkles blurts out, before he can stop himself. Kindermann was supposed to _be here_. This entire operation was designed with Kindermann in mind, and if he's not even - "Uh," he says belatedly, "The best, the best, the best the, best the the -"

"Yes, he is the best," Dr Burgess agrees. "It won't be for long. He cares too much about his work here." She watches him for another moment, and then adds, thoughtfully, "You're not like the other patients."

 _A ha ha, NO_ , Sparkles thinks. _Possibly because I'm not a patient at all. Possibly because I'm here to expose you all for the sadistic frauds you are!_

"Paisley," he agrees.

He's really very clever.

* * *

Dr Burgess introduces him to Nurse Schwartz, who ushers him to the activities room and then _abandons_ him in the midst of the genuine patients of die Anstalt, who variously ignore him or stare far too intently for comfort.

Left to his own devices, he would be perfectly content to find a corner and wait this out, but the recorder is on and he's meant to be gathering stories, anecdotal evidence that can be transcribed and published or played in front of juries, so he takes a deep breath and sucks it up. "Ah - hey," he says, directing this at sheep with soft white curls, the only patient that seems capable of meeting his eyes. "I'm - I'm Sparkles."

"Dolly," she says. It's friendly enough, but when Sparkles takes a step toward her she growls, low in her throat. _Ooookay_ , he thinks, but says, "I - sorry, I didn't mean -"

"That's Lilo," Dolly continues, as though nothing's happened. Sparkles follows her nod to the small hippo banging a couple of blocks together disconsolately. "And that's Sly and Dub." She indicates a dizzy-looking snake patterned like a rainbow, and a turtle doing a merciless series of step-ups. 

"Are you the only four patients here?" Sparkles asks, manoeuvring a little closer by approaching slowly at an oblique angle.

Dolly shakes her head, motioning to the cardboard box sitting off to the side. "Five. Six, now, with you. That's Kroko." She lowers her voice. "He's got some issues."

* * *

"This won't take very long," Dr Burgess tells him as he pads into the therapy room for his first session. First up is a medical examination, in which he's poked and prodded more than he'd prefer, but Burgess doesn't appear to notice the small zippered pocket in his stomach and, well, small blessings. He'll take what he can get.

After that's over she pulls a sock puppet over her hand and moves until it's right up in his face. He blinks bemusedly at the yellow yarn and serious, black-framed glasses. _Seriously?_ Sparkles thinks. _SERIOUSLY? This is the great and terrifying therapy of die Anstalt?_ Ange is going to be incredibly disappointed, but Sparkles finds himself a little relieved.

He blinks, suddenly aware that he's sitting in the waiting room. He has a vague memory of ignoring the sock puppet because it made him desperately want to giggle, but there's nothing after that. He glances quickly around, checking for watchers, but he seems to have been left to himself for the moment, placed carefully in the centre of a brown bean bag chair that smells faintly of plastic.

This sort of wackiness is so incredibly not on. 

He sits there shuddering for a moment, then decides that he probably deserves a cigarette. He's not going to light one up, he's not an idiot; he just wants to hold it in his paw, maybe smell it. He thinks it might be enough to pull him back from the panic attack that's looming around the corners of his brain, poking at the blank spots and cringing.

The cigarettes are gone.

By the time Dr Burgess comes around the corner and walks briskly over to him, clipboard in one hand, he doesn't even have to feign being half out of his mind. She smiles at him, apparently oblivious to his shallow breaths and panic-wide eyes. "You made great progress, today, Sparkles," she tells him, and follows up with a speech about giving up his crutches and anxiety. "You must stop repressing," she finishes. She does not mention or allude to the cigarettes even once, and Sparkles can't quite find the breath to ask about them.

He feels as though tiny ants are marching in drunken lines up and down his fur, and when Dr Burgess finally finishes talking to him and walks him back to the activities room, he ignores Dolly's wave and makes a beeline for the far end by the window, where he tucks himself face-first into a corner and pretends to be sad instead of completely freaked out.

He carefully unzips his stomach pocket again and ignores the empty space where the cigarettes had been nestled, pulling out the recorder instead, keeping it close to his body while he rewinds it. He curls up a little and turns the sound down low, presses his ear against the speaker. No voices float out; all he can hear are the shuffle of feet, the rustle of cloth. The brief noise of a drum, tapped once or twice and startlingly close. There's nothing else.

Sparkles stops the recorder, tucks it safely away with mechanical movements. He stays close to his corner, but after a moment spins around to face the rest of the room, the other patients. He thinks, _I am not panicking, I am not panicking, I AM NOT PANICKING OH MY GOD I am not PANICKING. AUGH._

When he finally surfaces from this little moment, Dolly has moved directly in front of him and is watching him steadily. "That's a little creepy," he tells her, and she startles out a raspy, barking laugh.

"How was therapy?" 

"Um," Sparkles says, "also creepy. More than a little, though."

"They make you dream," Dolly tells him, expression going distant. "They can make you dream all sorts of things."

"Dreams are nothing!" There's sudden movement from Dub's side of the room as struggles out of his shell, advances as Sparkles shrinks back. "Dreams are _nothing_ compared to what else they can do to you. Just wait. Just wait. Just you wait. It lives under the bed and they bring it out for you!"

"What is he-" Sparkles starts, just as Dolly says, "Stop _saying_ that -"

"Just wait until you see what they keep under the bed!" Dub shouts, eyes wild, struggling a little as Nurse Schwartz scoops him up and carries him away. "They keep it UNDER THE BED. UNDER THE BED!"

"Ignore him," Dolly whispers. "Don't even worry about it. There's nothing under the bed."

"Sure," Sparkles agrees, and only just barely restrains himself from marching over to Nurse Schwartz and producing his sanity letter.

* * *

"We're starting your on a drug regime tonight," Nurse Goff tells him. "Don't be too worried if it doesn't feel quite right; it will probably take a couple of variations for us to find one that that works for you." She offers him a little paper cup. There are oblong green, dark blue and pink pills. A little, yellow round pill. He grasps the cup with both paws and rattles them around a little, watches them bump into one another.

The commercials on TV tell him to just say no to drugs, and after the giant, scary blank that is his last therapy session, he's inclined to agree. He hesitates, thinks of Ange reviewing documents and patient statements late at night over the kitchen table, thinks of the letter tucked safely away, his guarantee and proof and comfort, and he ignores the worry tickling up his spine for just long enough to down all of the pills at once. He can totally, totally do this.

Goff smiles at him. "I'll see you in the morning, Sparkles."

By the time she's turned out the lights and locked the door quietly behind her, Sparkles is already starting to feel strange and floaty. He lies down on the too-large bed, feeling the too-scratchy sheets and the too-thin blanket and the too-lumpy pillow. _Like I could ever fall asleep here_ , he thinks, still feeling a faint thrum of excitement from what he's attempting to do here, and he's in a house, he's in a house, he's in a big scary house that is falling in around him. The sound of slamming doors echo from every direction but he runs anyway, trying desperately to escape the cardboard box. The mothballs. The muffled silence.

He hits the top of the second-floor stairs as a window strains from the wall, snapping open and closed; he skids into the banister and tumbles and bounces down the stairs, landing face-down on the sickly-green carpet below. He scrambles upward in terror - he knows these carpets, these sly, cruel carpets that are secretly lakes with a thousand biting mouths, and as he falls and splashes and sinks and stares down into the gloom he can see the terrible, slimy, eely fish swarming their way up to -

Sparkles comes awake slowly, fighting every step of the way. Consciousness is elusive and difficult to claim, and when he finally grasps it he's still groggy, tatters of the nightmare still clinging to him. "Just say no to drugs," he gasps, and then Nurse Schwartz is knocking on the door, and it's morning.

* * *

Morning around here apparently means more therapy for him, and so after a breakfast of cold toast and some pretty damn good oatmeal, he's escorted to the same therapy room from before. He walks through the door, sits on the bed, and -

\- and finds himself sitting in the waiting room. Again. _Why am I doing this_ , Sparkles thinks wildly to himself, _I must have been crazy to -_ He shakes his head vehemently. That's not a train of thought he wants to follow through to its completion, thank you very much. 

Nurse Huffman is doing paperwork at his desk, but keeps glancing up to check on him; in the activities room, Dolly sits next to him until supper. Due to one thing or another he doesn't find a quiet moment alone until he's in his room at the end of the day, swallowing two pinks pills and a green one.

He knows he doesn't have much time, so he fumbles out the recorder, rewinds it a bit and hits play. There are actual voices this time, some sort of super creepy talk that Dr Burgess, her voice tinny through the speakers, tells him is "motivational therapy."

"Be all you can be. Cast off the shackles of the unkind. You must open yourself up to happiness."

Sparkles is just aware enough to put the recorder back in his pocket, but he leaves it on to play through to the end. He's still listening to the "motivational" catchphrases as he falls asleep, and when he wakes up he discovers that he's mouthing, "Cast off the shackles of the unkind."

* * *

The day they bring Dolly out of the therapy room screaming, Nurse Goff quits. "I can't do this anymore," she says, voice low. From his vantage point, all Sparkles can see of her is a silhouette, stark against the frosted glass of door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. "I can't reach under that bed again and - I can't - I can't - I can't -" The rest is an incoherent murmur that he can't quite make out, not matter how hard he strains his ears. He sits on a small yellow chair in the corner of the activities room, scribbling out a story in a notebook with a broken stub of crayon, and pretends to be engrossed in this when Goff moves slowly into the hallway, hunched over like gravity is exerting a stronger pull on her than it is on the rest of the world. She shoots him a glance as she turns to the door leading to the outside. Something is communicated in that brief moment of eye contact; Sparkles isn't sure _what_ , exactly, but he feels like she was trying to tell him something.

Later, when Nurse Schwartz tucks him into bed and he's coasting on a pink pill and a white pill and a yellow pill, he thinks that it might have been, _Run_.

* * *

"The thing is," Sparkles says, waving his arms in the air, "the thing is, the thing is, I'm doing all the work, see?"

"Tell me more," Dr Burgess says, nodding encouragingly. 

"And she forgot me in a _closet_ ," Sparkles continues obligingly, completely outraged. 

Okay, well. He feels a little bad, complaining about Ange like this to _the enemy_ , but ... 

* * *

This is becoming an unwelcomingly familiar scenario - Sparkles, in the waiting room, with a big blank in his memory representing his last therapy session. "It's like the worst game of CLUE in existence," he mutters, in an attempt to console himself. He feels ominously lighter, and when he pats himself down he can tell that the recorder is gone. No way to tell what happened, then. The blank is just going to stay blank, and all his carefully gathered conversations are never going to get out to Ange.

 _So what_ , he thinks, petulant. Ange is kind of using him and this whole scenario is freaking him out, but he still has the note. He can still stop this anytime he wants.

* * *

It's dark. Or, no - it's not dark, Sparkles is just wearing a coat on his head. It's green and brown and much too big; not one of his coats, and not one of Ange's coats, either. Ange doesn't have coats that are green and brown and light as a feather. Sparkles decides it is ugly and moves to wriggle away. A low, slow zipper sound growls from somewhere in the black around him, and the coat grows heavier on his back. Sparkles tries to stay very still so it won't find him, but the rustling of fabric is only the coat arms moving to embrace him.

The growling erupts into shrill shrieks that hurt Sparkles' ears and a thousand red birds skuttle out of the handholes, glowing faint yellows, and when they crawl up the walls like spiders the light disappears, the light's disappearing, the sound of claws and beaks and legs brushing against one another to a relentless zipper heartbeat. 

He can hear Dub's voice, shouting in the darkness. "There's something under the bed," Dub shrieks, and Sparkles suddenly knows, without a shadow of doubt, that the coat is moving him through the black toward the bed in the therapy room, and that Dub was right all along.

There's a sudden flare of light and he becomes slowly aware of Nurse Schwartz's hand on his shoulder. He can't tell whether she's real or a dream, and he drifts through the morning by attempting to place things in their proper categories. "Toast," he mutters, ignoring Dolly's startled look. "Unfortunate reality." Something horrible lurking under the therapy bed: dream. Oatmeal: reality. Thousands of red birds: dream. He's just starting to feel pretty certain of these divisions when he's ushered into the therapy room. His gaze is drawn inexorably to the bed. The covers have slipped a little, enough that he can just make out a shape lurking in the shadows underneath.

"NO FREAKING WAY," he bellows, recoiling backward, all his careful delineations between reality and unreality crumbling in an instant. There's something under the bed, there's SOMETHING under the BED, there's something UNDER the BED, THERE'S SOMETHING UNDER THE BED OH GOD THERE'S -

* * *

He feels weird and blissed out. Limp. Stretched out. Dolly nods knowingly from across the little table. "They showed you what's under the bed," she says, and there's less snarl in her voice than usual.

Sparkles thinks, _I'm a rational creature. I just worked the whole under-the-bed situation up in my head. It can't be so bad if it makes you feel this way_. Empty. Calm. Like he can fill himself up with good things, light things, anything he wants. Dr Burgess has suggested happiness. She really cares about him, about how he's doing; he can tell by the concern in her voice when she speaks to him, the time she spends checking in on him even when he's not in therapy. It's really not so bad here. Sparkles reaches across the table and puts a paw over Dolly's hoof. They smile tentatively at each other.

Ange hasn't tried to see him once. 

* * *

"Why did you come here, Sparkles?" Dr Burgess asks. 

It's hard to remember. He thinks he was lost. "Emotionally," he clarifies.

"Yes, yes," Dr Burgess says, looking pleased. "That shows some good self-awareness, Sparkles."

He likes it here. He likes his chair. He likes his friends. He likes Dolly. 

"Yes, we like you, too. We're concerned about you, about your well-being. You must give up what is troubling you."

That's hard.

"Yes, I know, but they don't have to go far. Give your troubles to me, and I can look after them for you until you are ready to fully release them." Dr Burgess leans forward, voice earnest and sincere.

Sparkles hesitates, then slowly reaches into his stomach and pulls out the letter with Ange's phone number. He hands it over, makes sure that it's still carefully folded over so that all that can be seen is blank white paper.

"Is this what's been bothering you?" Dr Burgess asks. "It's important to face what you've been repressing."

He doesn't want to look at it right now, and he doesn't want Dr Burgess to look at it, not yet, but he's so, so tired of carrying Ange's needs, Ange's expectations around with him.

"That's fine, Sparkles. That's good."

* * *

Today the pills are purple and yellow and white. "I haven't had purple before," he observes, faintly excited. He's pretty sure he likes the colour purple. Or was that Ange? It was probably Ange. When has he ever had anything for himself, anything that Ange hasn't given him or expected of him? What kind of friend gets married and promptly _forgets you in a closet for three years_? Not a very good friend, that's what! 

Dolly shrugs. "They're a little oblivious, I think," she says.

What Sparkles thinks is that Dr Burgess is a GENIUS. He has totally been repressing all the anxieties Ange has caused him, is continuing to cause him. He's here because of Ange! He's here being vaguely excited by the concept of new colours of pills because of _Ange_!

Dolly must have wandered off sometime during his rant; that's the one thing about Dolly that truly bothers him. Forget the barking and the growling; he hates that she never listens to him all the way through his speeches. But it doesn't matter. Dolly doesn't matter, Ange doesn't matter, purple pills certainly don't matter. Everything will be better once this is over. In two days he'll have been here for three weeks, and that's plenty long enough. In two days, he's getting out.

* * *

Sparkles interrupts Dr Burgess in the middle of an enthusiastic review of how far he's come since he first got here. "Yeah," he says, feeling a little guilty and a lot relieved. "About that. I'm actually a spy sent to destroy you. Uh, sorry about that. No hard feelings. If you'll just call the number on that paper I gave you -"

Instead of looking horrified, Dr Burgess simply looks sad. No, not sad - sympathetic. She leans forward and places an enormous hand on his back in what appears to be gesture of comfort. "Sparkles," she says. "I already have. It was disconnected."

There is a long, terrible moment in which he feels as though the earth moves sickeningly beneath him, and when he finally manages to regain some of his footing and concentrate on Dr Burgess's concerned expression, nothing is where he left it. "I'm lost," he says, in a small voice that he hardly recognizes. 

"It's all right to be afraid, Sparkles," Dr Burgess says urgently. "Everyone's afraid of something. You must work through it and move beyond it. This paper," and she flourishes it, "is a symbol of your past, nothing more. You _can_ move beyond this moment."

He loudly disagrees with that assessment for a few minutes. Eventually there's a pinprick on his arm and things go a little hazy, a little slower and quieter. When he's calmed down enough to be returned to the activities room, he arrives to discover that Lilo is gone. "What happened?" Sparkles wonders.

"She's been doing much better," Nurse Schwartz tells him, gentle. "Her family came to get her."

Sparkles is sloppy with drugs and Ange's betrayal is fresh and bitter in his throat. "You guys are my family," he cries fervently, throwing out his arms to take in Dolly and the remaining patients, Schwartz and Dr Burgess standing in the doorway watching him. "You guys are my family," he says again, more quietly this time. "I - I don't have anyone else."

Dolly sits close to him for the rest of the day, and she doesn't snarl. Not even once.

* * *

One morning he wakes up and thinks he can see Ange through the bars of his window, outside the gate to the grounds, arguing with security. They're too far away for him to hear what they're saying, but he concentrates on Ange's wind-milling arms and imagines she's saying things like "need to get in" and "huge mistake!" He slouches against the windowsill and stares up at the wide grey sky. He briefly considers trying to get her attention, but it's not even worth it; he has nothing to show for his time in this place, and these people are trying to help him. Ange is his past. Maybe it's time to let it all go.

When he glances back at the gate, Ange is gone. He's not certain she was ever there in the first place.

* * *

He's sitting in his yellow chair again. It's his by virtue of sitting in it all the time, and he likes the friendly colour, the one wobbly leg. He can't quite remember how he got to the activities room, but that matters far less than the dark shape moving down the hallway. It drifts noiselessly toward him, a shadowy blob that stops in front of him and resolves suddenly into a human face - large nose, salt-and-pepper beard, dark circles under the eyes.

"Dr Kindermann," he sighs.

"Ah, my new friend," Dr Kindermann replies, with the beginnings of a small, kind smile. "I hear you have been making progress." He straightens from his crouch and takes a pace back, saying softly, almost to himself, "It is very good to be home."

Yes.

 


End file.
